Yet, I still found myself shocked when August 1 rolled around and every single Chick-Fil-A franchise in my suburb had cars lined up around the block, long lines flowing out the doors and into the parking lot.

After I dropped my son off at camp, my morbid curiosity got the better of me. I went to a Chick-Fil-A a few miles away from my house and decided to take a look around. I decided to feign ignorance about “Appreciation Day” and see what people had to say about it. I started asking what was happening.

For the most part, people were very polite. They said they were there to support “free speech” and “free enterprise.” But others were more forthcoming. I heard a lot about the sanctity of marriage and letting our dollars support organizations with “good Christian values.”

One man took his time in explaining why free speech was so important to this country. And then his companion interrupted that they were also happy that the cause would allow them to “stick it to the loudmouth queens.”

I also spoke with a Mom who was there with her kids. She was also big on the free speech line. And, as we chatted, I quickly learned that free speech in her mind, also includes letting her 9-year-old use the word “homo.”

Soon, I was not only shocked, I was ashamed. Ashamed to see that kind of hate coming out of so-called Christians.

A brilliant science writer, Jesse Bering, wrote his own response to the Chick-Fil-A brou-ha-ha — arguing that statements like Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy’s comments are not only incorrect but dangerous. It’s definitely worth a read (though I’ll warn you that there are a few expletives in the mix). But I want to highlight one of his points in particular.

One of the great frustrations faced by science writers is that, more often than not, we’re preaching to the choir. People who really need to be exposed to critical scientific information regarding homosexuality are, frankly, either too unintelligent to understand the research or—more unforgivably—they’re perfectly smart enough, it’s just that they’re too incurious about the deep complexities of human psychology to bother to learn. Now, for many subject areas in science, such cognitive dullards and intellectual sloths are easy to ignore, even when they display remarkable naivete. To be unaware of the chemical composition of water, for instance, is certainly sad, but such ignorance is usually pretty harmless. But with a basic scientific understanding of sexual orientation, ignorance can be sinister. Knowledge may not trump hatred in all cases, but for most reasonable individuals, it tends to facilitate humanity.

It’s my hope that more people will try to find ways to facilitate humanity–through science, experience and the American (and Texan) appreciation for freedom. That one day soon, we’ll look back at Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day as something that never should have happened.

I can still make an esoteric argument that gay marriage is meddling or social engineering or whatnot, but I have lost my ability to put my soul behind it. Maybe you can sit across the table from a beloved friend and tell them that your straight family is more legitimate, more right, more legally and politically appropriate than theirs. Perhaps you can look into the eyes of people you care for and respect and explain that providing their children with the full legal protection of an official family would threaten something important that no one seems to be able to coherently define.

I am not going to do that. Eat your sandwich alone.

Maybe all hope is not lost. Maybe we’ll get there sooner than we think.